Dale Abbey

 While we're in Derbyshire (see previous post), we'll stop awhile at Dale Abbey.

There was once a baker of Derby who, once he'd put bread on his family's table (so to speak), went to his local church and gave all else of his earnings to the poor. After a while, the BVM appeared to the baker and told him to drop everything and set up an hermitage at Depedale. The baker hadn't a clue where Depedale was, but he headed out of Derby nonetheless. He found it: a marsh in the middle of nowhere. Dispirited, he turned around, and lo! he found a friendly rock, so he carved a little hermitage out of it.

One day, the local lord saw smoke coming from this rock and thundered over to tell someone where to go... but then he saw it was a holy, poor hermit and instead gave him the land and a bit more. The baker-hermit built a dwelling and an oratory.

Around 1160, Serlo de Grendon, husband of the lord's daughter Margery, on the advice of his godmother, the Gomme of the Dale (I think I shall be called Gomme by my godsons - the stuff of legend), invited some Austin canons over from Calke. But these canons, finding themselves in a woodland, forgot themselves and took to hunting and enjoying themselves. Serlo's son William sacked them and replaced them with Premonstratensians. These white canons didn't last long, overcome by poverty. William was dispirited. But his cousins Matilda and Geoffrey de Salicosa Mara (which I take to be the sallow mere) came to the rescue and endowed and re-founded the monastery with white canons from Newhouse, Lincs.

All this, and more, is written in the chronicle of Thomas de Muskham, one of the canons.

Here's the thirteenth-century seal. A pointed oval, with BVM and Babe under a pointed arch and on top of a trefoiled arch with the abbot praying, with his pastoral staff. On either side are mini-towers with trefoils. The legend: S' ECCLESIE : SANCT : MARIE : DE : PARCO : STANLEE. (Stanley Park being the land next to Dale that the Sallowmeres gave.)

Darley Abbey

How about this for seals?

You can enlarge this photo and see another photo of it, on the Derbyshire Record Office blog. The seal on the far side is the bishop's; the 15 on this side are various layfolk - and I say folk with reason: look at the third from the right! The chirograph (the medieval equivalent of carbon-copy paper) was the resolution of a dispute between the villagers of Glapwell and the Abbey of Darley over the Glapwell chapel roof. (Disputes between church and parish over chancel repairs are nothing new.) The Abbey gave 'our parishioners' 5 acres in return for their accepting responsibility for chancel repairs. The abbot at the time was called Walter de Walton. Great name. Almost as good as the carpet salesman, Walter Wall...

The Austin canons who became Darley Abbey was collected together by a burgess of Derby called Towyne in 1137 and given a house as an oratory for St Helen (Constantine's mother). Then, in 1154, Robert Ferrers, earl of Derby, gave the canons and their abbot a substantial foundation in churches, land and tithes. The canons looked to move from their town house, and in the 1160s Hugh, dean of Derby, gave them his lands at Little Darley for their building site. Here, under Abbot Albinus, they built a monastery dedicated to St Mary (like most Austin houses). Albinus by name, albineus by nature: according to a canon chronicler of Calke, Albinus was "brightly manifesting so many of the requisites of a holy and virtuous life, that the interior of the cloister and the church, and the most inward sanctuary of religion, may be perceived to this day to be redolent with the fragrance of such a father."

Sadly I don't have a picture of Darley's (13th-century) seal for you (yet). It is a pointed oval, with the BVM, nimbed and seated on a throne; she dandles the Babe with her right hand and holds an orb with fleur-de-lys sceptre (a bit like Merton's). The legend is SIGILLVM : SANTE : MARIE : DE : DERLYE.

Darley Abbey became a mill vill, and one of the only traces left of the Abbey is now - aptly - an inn.

 

White Ladies, Brewood

 A slight departure - no seal for this one yet, but some capitals instead.

White Ladies, or the Priory of St Leonard, Brewood, was founded during the reign of Henry II by - well, no-one knows whom.  English Heritage suggests a wealthy patron because the church was built in a single campaign, but that patron didn't give the priory any suitable endowment.  The White Ladies remained gently poor; the church is as it was (albeit now in rather more ruinous a state) when it was first built, and the nuns numbered no more than half a dozen.  Although in a very different part of the kingdom, this priory recalls Sylvia Townsend Warner's fictitious Oby Priory.  The only thing I can ever remember about White Ladies is one 14th-century prioress (Alice Harley) being chastised for going hunting with her hounds. 

A friend insists on finding nice, interesting places to stretch one's legs on a journey, and that's how we found ourselves at White Ladies. Only the remains of the church are left - nothing of the conventual buildings stands.

The capitals are here:

They are unlike, for example, those at Buildwas, but they may bear comparison with Lilleshall. I stick them up here to invite comparisons!

Lesnes

Richard's son Geoffrey would become bishop of Winchester, and continue a close relationship between the de Lucies and various Austin houses of his province, including Merton.

The remains of Lesnes, with Toby,
who runs the children's entertainment at
Merton Priory

 Lesnes Abbey was founded by Richard de Lucy in 1178.  Richard had had a distinguished career:  he started out serving Henry I, was governor of Falaise under Stephen, and became chief justiciar under Henry II, who didn't seem to mind that Richard had stood against him in the civil war.

As justiciar, Richard was instrumental in Henry's campaign to remove or reign-in Thomas Becket.  Becket's murder in 1170 rode on the European Zeitgeist and Becket was canonised (made a saint) in 1173 - a remarkably short time.  Thomas' sainthood did Henry II's reputation no favours, and he undertook a pilgrimage of penance in 1174 to Canterbury to get his former friend's forgiveness.  

Four years later, in 1178, Richard de Lucy founded Lesnes Abbey (at the Westwode in Lesnes).  As well as being dedicated to the BVM (the usual saint for Austin houses), Lesnes was dedicated was to St Thomas the Martyr, so we may imagine that this was Richard's penance.  Richard retired to Lesnes that year and died a few months later, in July 1179.

A seal survives, showing Thomas, vested for mass, right hand in benediction, left hand holding his staff of office. This is typical for episcopal seals; the cross of his crozier shows that he is archbishop.  The 12th century was the inventor of heraldry, and an important part of heraldry is canting, or punning.  Either side of Thomas are two great fish.  These are pikes - or luces, to give them their other name.

De Gray Birch's description: 13th cent. Pointed oval : St Thomas Becket, full-length, with mitre and pall, lifting up the r. h. in benediction, in the 1. h. a crozier. In the field, on each side a luce or pike hauriant palewise, in allusion to the arms of the founder, Richard de Lucy ; on the r. also a pierced mullet of eight points.  *SIGILL' ECCL'IE S THOME MARTIRIS DE LIESNES.

He also notes a small round counterseal with the mark of the matrix handle: St. Thomas, half-length.

De Gray Birch seems to be describing the seal of our image.  (The image of the seal is from lucy.net, which has lots more information on the Lucies and lots of pictures of Lesnes.)  However, his dating of 13th century seems too late to me. The style of Thomas' mitre is much more 12th-century, when they wore them side-on (at least, they did on seals). Compare Nigel of Ely (left).  I suspect that the Lesnes seal was made pretty soon after the abbey's foundation.

Lesnes Abbey makes a nice day out.

Monasteries and the importance of seals

Monks (or canons or nuns) were not supposed to have personal property.  Presumably this extended to seals.  Apart from rules about possessions, the reason for restricting the ownership and use of seals within a monastery is pretty obvious, and is illustrated beautifully by a story from 12th-century St Albans Abbey.  In 1146, Ralph, treasurer to the bishop of Lincoln, was appointed abbot of St Albans, as the bishop had promised.  Not too long afterwards, he found an uncut seal at the workbench of Brother Anketil - who had, prior to taking his vows, been moneyer to the king of Denmark and therefore was probably a skilled engraver.  Ralph suspected forgery afoot, and sacked the prior, whom he thought was behind it all as part of a move to depose him (Ralph).  He who had the monastic seal had monastic power.

Abbot Samson swept the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds thoroughly with a stiff new broom.  He took inventories and accounts, and stopped certain practices.  One of his reforms concerned seals:

On a certain day he made an order in chapter, that every one who had a seal of his own should give it up to him, and so it was accordingly done, and there were found three-and-thirty seals. He himself explained the reason of this order, forbidding that any official should incur any debt above twenty shillings without the assent of the prior and convent, as had been the custom heretofore. To the prior and to the sacrist, indeed, he returned their seals, but kept the rest himself.

Seals gave authority and authenticity to documents and transactions. In order to control income and expenditure, you needed to control who had a seal - who was authorised to make or take payments on behalf of the monastery.  33 seals is rather a large number and suggests a somewhat anarchic approach to monastic economics!